Who I Was with Her

by Nita Tyndall

“That’s what you want, then, yeah?” What I want? “Yeah,” I say, and I reach over and squeeze her hand. “I think it is.”

This is my coming out. One person at a time. No big statement, no grand gesture. Only people I want to tell. Why should I come out the way everyone else wants me to?

“I don’t get why everyone wants me to always strive for something bigger,” I say. “Why can’t you just be happy with me, with where I am now?

Picture-perfect girls with big dreams and shiny hair. But that’s not me. I don’t know if it ever has been, but for her, I was willing to try. Wanted to try, wanted to be that shiny golden girl she saw me as.

And I don’t have to know. I don’t have to have a map, a plan, color-coded schools on a spreadsheet. It’s okay that I don’t. It’s okay to want things for myself.

We mourn a girl. A messy, hot-tempered, queer, beautiful stubborn girl. Not an angel, not a martyr, not an Instagram picture on someone’s account or a ghost for me to chase.

I can’t bring her back by running as fast as I can, by kissing Elissa, by wearing her scrunchie.

But I can grieve, I can mourn, and I can remember.

She’s always leading. I’m always following.

“I love you, too,” I say. And she’s smiling and she kisses me and I love her, I love her. She is beautiful and she is a girl and I love her. And right now, I think I might be okay with that.

I have stopped counting how long it’s been since she died.

I am alive, and the girl I was with Maggie isn’t here anymore, but I don’t have to forget her; I don’t have to forget who I was.

My name is Corinne Parker. I loved a boy named Trent, a girl named Maggie. I loved them differently and equally but I loved them and they were real, they mattered.

I don’t have to figure it all out right now.